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PETER LUCAS: Obama and Kerry can't launder the truth

By Peter Lucas

Updated:
08/12/2016 09:14:30 AM EDT

When a politician tells you that you don't have a story, you know you've got a story.

The non-story line was the reaction of President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry to the report that the U.S. secretly paid the Iranians $400 million in cash simultaneously to the release of four U.S. hostages in a deal that looked like a ransom payment.

They were like the cops at a car wreck: "Move along, folks, nothing to see here."

The ransom story was initially broken by The Wall Street Journal, and it sent the Obama administration scurrying.

"We do not pay ransom for hostages," Obama said before departing for his Martha's Vineyard vacation. It was an old story anyway, something he had already announced in January.

"It wasn't a secret. We were completely open with everybody about it," Obama said.

"The U.S. does not pay ransom," Kerry said.

Kerry, who negotiated the nuclear arms deal with Iran, said, "This is not a new story. It doesn't represent anything the people weren't told by the president."

Well, we all must have been asleep last January when Obama announced that he was shipping $400 million in U.S. cash to Iran.

That is probably why we missed the part that, Mafia-like, the cash was first sent to Switzerland to be laundered into Swiss francs and euros so not to break any U.S. currency laws. God forbid that this administration would skirt the law.

The laundering complete, the cash was then stacked on pallets and loaded onto an unmarked plane.

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The plane flew to Iran where it landed unannounced in the middle of the night at Mehrabad Airport in Tehran.

At the airport were the four U.S. hostages who just happened to be waiting to be released, according to the Obama administration.

It was just a happy coincidence and had nothing to do with the $400 million, the Obama administration said, because everyone knows the U.S. does not pay ransom for hostages. You have to be dumb as a rock not to know that.

The Iranians, out of the goodness of their hearts, were just letting them go in appreciation of Obama's paving the way for Iran to become a nuclear power, just like North Korea.

This ensures that the United States will be bracketed by two nuclear powers -- Iran and North Korea -- both of whom want to destroy the United States. It is part of Obama's legacy.

No. The $400 million was not for release of the waiting hostages. It was part of a settlement of $1.7 billion in Iranian funds leftover from a failed arms deal made under the late Shah of Iran.

But why were the four hostages at the airport?

Saeed Abededini, one of the hostages, told Trish Regan of Fox Business Network that they were at the airport waiting for the arrival of the money plane before they were to be let go. Otherwise "we never let you go," he quoted one of the guards saying.

But of course the United States does not pay ransom for hostages.

It just pays cash bribes and calls them settlements.

And of course the deal had to be done secretly and in cash. That is the way the Obama administration operates. Besides the Iranian Revolutionary Guards do not take credit cards, nor do its terrorist affiliates Hamas and Hezbollah, who will benefit from the cash windfall.

If a private company did business this way it would be investigated and indicted by the U.S. Justice Department.

It is good that the four American hostages were released. But this deal smells so bad it rivals the International Olympic Committee's shakedown of Brazil for the 2016 Summer Olympics. When you lie down with dogs you tend generally to come up with fleas.

Say what you will about Donald Trump, his stuttering candidacy for president and his business acumen, but negotiating with the thugs in Tehran, with $400 million in cash to play with, Trump at least would have gotten a golf course out of it.

President Barack Obama whiffed and got nothing, not even a mulligan.

But he did establish the base amount the U.S. will pay for the release of future hostages. It is another part of Obama's legacy.

Terrorists and kidnappers in Iran, North Korea and elsewhere now know the price of an American hostage is $100 million a head, which is expected to increase the practice of kidnapping Americans.

Thanks to Obama, Americans and American tourists abroad are now in more danger than ever before.

And beware. The U.S. does not pay ransom for hostages. Only sometimes. And only in laundered money.

It makes you proud.

Peter Lucas' political column appears Tuesday and Friday. Email him at luke1825@aol.com.

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